Is Apple’s iPhone Better for Business Than Google’s Android?

A key metric used to determine the success of a computing device is its adoption rate by businesses. During its quarterly earnings reports, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) often brings attention to the number of Fortune 500 companies that are using its iPhones and iPads. But small- and medium-sized businesses are also deploying and testing the iOS devices at a very high rate.

According to data collected by cloud service provider Intermedia, Apple’s iPhone activations represented 68.2 percent of all smartphone activations by small and medium businesses in the past three months. As the firm told AppleInsider, the iPhone’s high adoption rate was aided by the release of the latest model of the smartphone in late September, which increased the number of activations by 22 percent.

Apple’s domination of this segment of the business market pushed Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android to second place; for the three-month period, it accounted for only 25.1 percent of all activations. Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry OS followed with 4.1 percent, and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone came last, with 2.6 percent.

In terms of tablet activations, Apple’s numbers were even more impressive. From September to November, 92.6 percent of activations came from iPads. In comparison, BlackBerry’s PlayBook accounted for 5.3 percent, while the Microsoft Surface was left with 2.1 percent. However, Surface activations increased 45 percent month-over-month after the device was released in late October.